Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey: Structure of Nearby Elliptical Galaxies from 2-Dimensional Image Decomposition

Details Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey: Structure of Nearby Elliptical Galaxies from 2-Dimensional Image Decomposition Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey: Structure of Nearby Elliptical Galaxies from 2-Dimensional Image Decomposition

Jan 2012

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21910207h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #102.07

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Despite tremendous recent observational progress at both high and low redshifts, there are still many open questions regarding the formation and evolution of elliptical galaxies. A detailed examination of the photometric structure of the nearest and brightest elliptical galaxies can give useful clues to the dominant evolutionary pathway of these systems. Despite the wealth of details afforded by modern images, the structure of elliptical galaxies is still often simplified by single Sersic model fits, usually done in one dimension. We conduct a detailed structural decomposition of a complete, well-defined sample of 94 bright elliptical galaxies, selected from the Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey (CGS) of 605 bright, nearby galaxies in the sourthern hemisphere. The images are deep and were taken under good seeing conditions from Las Campanas Observatory. Our analysis makes use of the two-dimensional fitting code GALFIT. We find evidence that a large fraction (2/3) of these local ellipticals are well fit by a two-component model, each of which can be described by a Sersic function. The secondary component is either a compact central component or a very extended outer component. We examine the impact of these results on the scaling relations of elliptical galaxies, and discuss their implications for different galaxy formation scenarios.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey: Structure of Nearby Elliptical Galaxies from 2-Dimensional Image Decomposition does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey: Structure of Nearby Elliptical Galaxies from 2-Dimensional Image Decomposition, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey: Structure of Nearby Elliptical Galaxies from 2-Dimensional Image Decomposition will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1573152